Alphabet Oneshots
by Sherlock Emrys
Summary: A series of oneshots for each letter. No slash, varying styles and themes, all family friendly. Featuring Aziraphale and Crowley. Chapter 3- Engravings. The life of a historical figure coopted for the sake of a story.
1. Acorn, Baboon, Cant

**So I've started a new oneshot series. Of varying lengths and themes, I am writing a short story for one word for every letter. I'm not posting each one in a seperate chapter as some are very short, so it will be about three to a chapter. I'll put any individual notes next to each story.**

* * *

**Acorn**

They say that from tiny acorns, mighty oaks do grow. Well, humans say that. Angels don't bother. They've never quite mastered the very human art of stating the absolutely obvious in a manner that somehow makes it meaningful.

Nonetheless, it is true. Very often the very smallest of things can become something very, very important. Save-the-world kind of important.

The acorn in this analogy was actually an acorn. The chance of that being the case is about a googol to one, but because googol- to-one chances appear nearly as often as million-to-one chances, which crop up nine times out of ten.

Anyway. Back to this acorn. It was hanging innocently from a tree branch, where it had been hanging for its entire life. Its entire life hadn't been all that long. It had only just ripened and was ready to fall.

The oak tree that it hung on was fairly large, fairly sturdy. It was also right by a road. Down this road many travellers had walked. The acorn didn't know this, because it was an acorn. They don't pay much attention.

Yet another traveller was coming down the road now. He was alone, which was unusual in this era. He was blonde, which was a great deal more common, and he looked battered and exhausted. He was stained with blood although there were no obvious wounds. The local tribes were barely more than savages, known to the Romans as the Suione. They worshipped a dozen different deities, although about 250 of the 500 villages had mysteriously converted over to the new religion taking hold in Rome. This road led to the 251st.

In fact, the traveller was about halfway along the road to the next village. The country had been neatly divided in two, with one half being neat and law abiding and the other half being even more barbaric and self-indulgent than they were to start with.

He was tired and injured. He'd been hurt in a fight less than a week previously and yet had decided to keep going anyway. He hadn't slept for a week, although he didn't technically need to. This was why he wasn't paying as much attention to the road ahead of him as he should have been.

Just as the blonde man passed below the branch on which the acorn hung, a sudden weight made the branch waver. The acorn's stalk snapped and the acorn fell down.

It landed on the blonde man's head. He immediately jumped backwards and stumbled slightly as he landed. With a slight frown of effort, white wings erupted from the back of his tunic, shedding a few feathers.

The snake who had dislodged the acorn gave a hissing sigh and eyed his adversary disdainfully. He was a sorry sight- more than usual.

The snake unwound himself, dropping fluidly to the ground and transforming as he went. He straightened up, becoming a human-shaped creature in a dark tunic and cloak.

Aziraphale drew the sword hanging in the sheath at his side. It trembled slightly in his hand as he held it up.

Crowley shook his head.

'Do you ever think how stupid this is?'

Aziraphale narrowed his eyes. 'Don't you try and trick me-'

'This fighting. We keep meeting halfway and killing each other, then coming back and doing it again.' He stretched. 'Look at you. You're half dead.'

'I'm fine,' the angel snapped.

'Look, we know how this ends. Neither of us win, neither of us lose, we all go home and carry on. Why don't we just give it a miss this week?'

Aziraphale lowered the sword. 'I'm not listening to you.'

Crowley rolled his eyes. 'How about this? You take your half of the country, I'll take my half, and we'll stop fighting over it.'

Aziraphale looked uncertain. 'My superiors-'

'-don't care about Earth,' Crowley interrupted. 'Anyway, I'm not fighting you like this. It's not dignified for me to beat someone who's already injured.' Crowley transformed back into his favourite form, slithering back up the tree. 'There's no point fighting now anyway. That stupid acorn ruined everything.'

Two thousand years later, the oak tree that the acorn became had long since crumbled to dust and been forgotten. The literal oak tree. The metaphorical oak tree was alive and well, metaphors being much more durable.

* * *

**Baboon**

It was Africa, in the early second century. The Romans had invaded and settled and were setting up civilization there.

It was dusk, and it was raining. Rain in Africa is serious business. In Europe, it rains occasionally but regularly. In Britain, it rains often but lightly. In Wales is rains _all the time_, and yet doesn't flood. Much. But Africa gets all its rain at once and it does so very, very quickly.

Currently, the rain was approaching as far as possible the sensation of a very fast moving sea.

In a small, leaky tent, a man with dark hair was huddled in a cocoon of blankets, glaring at the world through one golden, slitted eye. The other was covered by an eyepatch. There wasn't anything wrong with it; he just felt that it looked daringly rakish and dangerous.

Next to him, outside the heap of blankets that constituted his companion, sat a blonde man with a put-upon expression.

'Crowley, do you really need _all_ the blankets?'

His friend hissed. 'Cold blooded, remember?'

'It isn't that cold,' Aziraphale said, but a moment later he unclasped his cloak and added it to the pile.

The rain poured down, and Aziraphale wondered if the entire ocean had been relocated to over their tent.

Suddenly, the rain was no longer outside their tent. The fabric gave way and collapsed, torn apart from outside, and there was a noise of eager chattering from the exterior.

Aziraphale leapt to his feet and drew his sword. Crowley, muffled in blankets, found himself unable to move and was swamped by tent fabric.

Crowley, struggling under his restraints, was bewildered to hear Aziraphale laughing.

'What's so funny, angel?' he hissed angrily.

His question was answered when the tent fabric was pulled aside, uncovering his face, and once he'd blinked away the immediate onslaught of rain he saw staring down at him a grinning face.

'Monkeys?' the demon growled.

'Baboons,' the angel corrected.

* * *

**Cant**

Angels can speak any language. So, of course, can demons. It was coded into their genes.

But amongst themselves, in Heaven, they speak their own language. It sounds a little like Hebrew, a little like Yiddish, a little like Latin, and for some reason, rather a lot like Elvish.

It is best not to speculate as to the reasons for this.

Aziraphale speaks in it sometimes. When he forgets where he is, when he is shocked or startled (and that is rare), when he finds a new book, when he is so angry with an unrepentant Crowley that he is reduced to simply yelling, when he contacts Heaven. He does, however, swear in English when he feels the need. This is partly because in his soul, he feels English is his mother tongue, and partly because Angel does not have any swearwords. By nature, really, it wouldn't.

Demons have their own language too. It sounds a little like Latin, something like German, a bit like Hebrew, and, for some reason, quite a bit like Klingon.

It's _really_ better not to speculate about that.

Crowley tries not to speak in it, but he does sometimes anyway. When he's really angry, when he forgets himself, when Hell sends him inconvenient orders, when Aziraphale gets himself hurt, and when he talks to Hell. He does swear in English, but he prefers to swear in Demon. It has a lot of swearwords. By nature, really, it would.

They try, however, not to speak it around each other. Angel is a language steeped in holiness and the mere sound of it can make a demon flinch. Not only does it burn their infernal essence with its holiness, it holds painful memories of the time before they Fell. Demon is a language as close to sonic evil as actually possible, and the sound of it reviles and repulses angels. It reminds them of what awaits them should they Fall, of what their former comrades have become, and the evil burns their souls.

But mostly, whenever Crowley forgets himself and swears, and Aziraphale forgets himself and curses, they both grow quiet and shrink away, because both languages sound so similar that it is impossible to not hear the closely woven linguistic roots and remember that the words _not so different_ don't just apply to their mother tongues.

* * *

** A cant is another word for dialect, or local variation, or sublanguage. I just... ran with it.**


	2. Domini

**AN: This one's on its own because it's rather long. It took a long time to get this to go in the direction I wanted it to, to be honest XD I was totally stuck until my friend suggested the phrase "Dominus Excors" which means King/Lord of the Idiots.**

**Also, not _very _ historical history!fic. So yeah.**

**The Latin is partly from a dictionary, partly from Google and partly from me. People who know Latin will probably laugh at the mistakes. Maybe I can pass it off as Az and Crowley being bad at Latin?**

* * *

**Domini**

It was the middle ages. Not a good time, for either of them. Life was hard in every class and demons in particular were at increased risk of a fatal accident with a mob with pitchforks. Angels weren't all that much better off.

Aziraphale was working as a physician; Crowley wasn't working at all if he could help it. It was Saturday evening and they were sitting in the back room of Aziraphale's practise.

Unlike most Saturdays, they were not drunk. Nor were they fighting, which was a relatively regular occurrence despite their Arrangement having been in place for approximately two centuries.

'Why did you not come sooner?' Aziraphale seethed. He pulled down some herbs from the bundles hanging from his ceiling and began to mix a paste.

Crowley scowled. 'In case you have forgotten, we are technically enemies.'

Aziraphale's lack of retort told Crowley that he _had _forgotten.

'Anyway, I knew you'd panic,' Crowley added, conveniently forgetting that he himself had done a fair bit of panicking over the last week as he'd realized that the wound wasn't healing and there was no human doctor who could treat him.

'What happened?' Aziraphale demanded as he unrolled a bandage.

Crowley sighed. 'It doesn't matter-'

'Yes it does,' the angel interrupted. 'Was it one of my brothers? Well intentioned as they are, they can be a little over zealous at times…'

Crowley snorted. 'Well intentioned? Towards whom?'

'Everyone, I think. It's a part of the job, after all,' Aziraphale said absently. 'Good intentions.' His brow creased. 'The humans have a saying about that. The road to Hell…'

'Frozen pedlars,' Crowley interrupted.

Aziraphale looked concerned. 'Have you got a fever? Delirium-'

'No, no,' Crowley snapped. 'The road to Hell. It'ss paved with frozen pedlars.'

'Of course,' Aziraphale said in a conciliatory tone, laying a hand on Crowley's forehead. 'Hmm. No signs of a fever, so likely no infection.' He frowned in concern. 'Maybe it's a concussion…'

Crowley swatted him away. 'It's nothing of the ssort, angel. I'm fine.'

'If you were fine, you wouldn't have dragged yourself into my shop making a mess all over the floor,' Aziraphale said sharply. 'Really, dropping feathers is a little inconvenient. How I shall explain it I don't know; perhaps a chicken run amok?'

'Ha bloody ha,' Crowley hissed. 'I mean that there's nothing wrong with my head.'

Aziraphale muttered something rude in Latin that Crowley pretended not to hear.

'Let me see the wound, then,' the angel demanded. 'I can't heal it if you keep it tucked into your essence like that.'

Gingerly, the demon allowed a wing to manifest. **[1] **

Aziraphale sucked in a breath as he saw the wound. 'And you're sure that it wasn't an angel that did that?' He got to work quickly, consulting one of his ancient leather-bound tomes of medicine before applying a disgusting looking paste that stung like hell, and Crowley knew what that felt like from first-hand experience.

'Ouch! I'm ssure,' Crowley hissed. 'What the hell iss that?'

'A mild antiseptic,' Aziraphale said absently. 'What happened to you, Crowley?'

'Nothing,' the demon insisted. 'I mean it.'

* * *

**[1] **Normally, his wings didn't actually exist on the physical plane. They were a sort of protrusion of essence, as the spirit of the demon could no longer be confined within the mortal vessel. For some reason, though, his always appeared as deep black raven's feather wings, no matter what he tried to do. He'd given up and just begun to wear black all the time anyway.

* * *

Aziraphale looked disapproving but dropped the subject. He finished cleaning out the wound and turned to the paste he'd mixed up earlier.

'What'ss that?' Crowley said, eyeing the bowl with some nervousness.

'A healing agent,' Aziraphale said with a sigh. 'It doesn't hurt much, you know.'

'Eassy for you to ssay,' muttered Crowley.

The door to Aziraphale's little apothecary store creaked open and both demon and angel froze.

A small face peeped around the door. It was quite possibly male, and the balance of probability was in favour of it being human, although Crowley wouldn't have placed any bets.

'Ah, young Master Ellis,' Aziraphale said smoothly. 'If you would be so kind, a mop and bucket to clean this mess would be most welcome.'

The creature nodded and withdrew its head.

'It ssaw me, angel,' Crowley hissed. Aziraphale clucked and began to bandage the wing, which is far more difficult than many people would think given the incredibly awkward physiology of wings when attached to humanoid creatures. It's a skill you pick up after three millennia or so.

'I wouldn't worry, dear,' he said soothingly. 'Humans never quite know what they're seeing, as a rule.'

'In general, yess, but thiss era iss very keen on uss,' Crowley pointed out with a wince as his injury twinged. 'Or you. Not sso keen on me which iss really where my problem iss, you ssee. He'ss not old enough to think he can't possssibly have sseen what he ssaw, and if word getss out…'

'Calm down,' Aziraphale said quietly. 'The boy is trustworthy.'

Crowley nearly choked. 'A trusstworthy human! I- _ow!_'

'All done,' Aziraphale said happily, tying off the edge of the bandage. 'Spread the wing? Good, now pull it right back in. You should be fine.'

With yet another wince and hiss of pain, Crowley pulled the injured wing back into his essence again and became, to mortal eyes, just another human.

'What did you do to it?' Aziraphale asked again as he filled a kettle from the standpipe in the corner of the room.

Crowley rolled his shoulders experimentally. 'I ssaid. It wass an accident.'

'An accident with what? A casket of gunpowder?'

'With an angry mob, if you musst know,' Crowley said reluctantly. Aziraphale looked taken aback and opened his mouth to ask for details, but at that moment the door creaked open.

The small urchin shuffled in again. It was clasping a mop and bucket in its paws.

'Ah, Master Ellis. Mop up this mess, if you don't mind,' Aziraphale said quickly, digging a small silver coin out of his pocket and throwing it to the grubby lad.

The coin vanished with remarkable efficacy, especially considering that Aziraphale threw like a girl and it should have landed a few feet short.

The small urchin began to sullenly mop up the trail of blood and feathers that was strewn over the stone-flagged floor. Aziraphale hung the kettle over the fire, threw another log onto it and then took a seat in the high-backed chair next to the hearth.

For a few moments there was silence. Then Aziraphale, with a cautious glance at Ellis, began to speak again.

'Quid? Quam erant vobis nocere?'

'Ego vobis,' Crowley muttered. He really hated Latin. There were some bad memories attached.

'Quin illi post te?' Aziraphale said worriedly.

Wait a moment. The majority of the readers are, by now, scratching their heads, muttering rude words and diving for google translate. As many of you will probably be completely lost, from now on Aziraphale and Crowley will speak in English, although swearwords will remain untranslated to protect the delicate amongst you.

'I don't _know_, angel,' Crowley said in frustration. 'I was careful, OK? They just turned up one night and started knocking down my front door.'

'Knocking _on,_' Aziraphale corrected. 'You really must practise your prepositions.'

'No,' Crowley said after a moment. 'No, I meant it the first time. It was a good door, too. Used to be on the front of a church.'

'How can you stand to be around something with so much holiness?' Aziraphale asked curiously.

Crowley laughed. 'The door of a church is the least holy thing there is, angel. People leave all the nastiness there while they're inside pretending that they didn't do anything wrong outside. It gets a kind of build up of generalized sin.'

Aziraphale sniffed.

'It's true,' Crowley said with a shrug. Moments later, he regretted the action as his injured wing flared.

'Don't do that!' Aziraphale said sharply.

Crowley glared. 'Helpful, telling me not to after I've done it.' He turned to the shelves of bottles and jars labelled in cryptic and mysterious handwriting, mainly to prevent anyone apart form the owner trying to use them. You could reach for what you thought was an analgesic and grab arsenic instead.

Which was exactly what Crowley did.

Master Ellis, who was dutifully cleaning up the thoroughly bizarre mess on the floor without comment- what the master did in his own time was his own business- watched the exchange with equanimity. He spoke not a word of Latin, but recognized that the master was a clever man who had every right to speak in a fancy language if he so chose.

He was, however, a little surprised to see the master's guest- a youngish man, with dark hair and high cheekbones, vaguely Irish in appearance he thought, with an eyepatch on one eye and that dreadful deformity in another- reaching for the shelf of medicines. The master was normally rather protective over that shelf and besides, nobody else could ever decipher his handwriting.

'Non bibendum!' the master yelled, leaping to his feet. The guest blinked slightly, looking at the bottle he'd just swallowed.

'Quid?'

'Bibere Arsenicum est!'

Ellis understood that alright. But the guest didn't seem all that worried.

'Excors!' he muttered. 'Hoc est culpa.'

'Quid mea culpa est?' The master was irritatedly poking the fire as if he'd rather it was his guest he was stabbing with a poker.

'Hoc est manus illegible est! Si intitulatum aperte-'

'Es in excors qui bibet!'

'Excors mea est? Es in excors!'

'Es in Dominus Excors!' The master turned back to the fire furiously.

The dark haired man was much paler now, and swaying a little. Ellis gave a gentle cough and the master swung around.

'Yes?'

'Er, beggin' your pardon sir, but he looks sick sir, and wasn't that Arsenic he just drank sir?'

Aziraphale sighed and covered his face with his hands. Crowley just had to die _now_, of all times. 'No. That was a standard tonic. He will be fine. However, you have finished your work for today, so why don't you run along?' This time, a gold coin was thrown in Ellis' direction, and Ellis recognized a bribe when he saw one. He took it and ran.

Aziraphale took a now shaking Crowley by the shoulder and sat him down on a bench.

'You _idiot_,' he said again.

Crowley managed a shaky grin. 'You need to work on your insults, angel. Dominus Excors?'

'There was nothing wrong with that,' Aziraphale said stiffly.

'King of idiots?'

'Maybe it wasn't the best,' Aziraphale admitted. 'But you really are insufferable and Latin is not the best language for cursing in.'

Crowley scowled and cursed. His head felt like it was splitting.

'Tomorrow,' he hissed, 'I am going to label all your poisons. Properly. And possibly feed you some. My head feels like a gang of Morris dancers are practising in it.'

'That's the arsenic,' Aziraphale said quickly. 'And whilst it's a nice thought, dear, you won't be back by tomorrow. It takes a week to come through, doesn't it?'

'I'm not… dying,' Crowley wheezed. His stomach spasmed and he fell off the bench, curling up on the floor.

'I hate to say it, dear, but I think you are,' Aziraphale said sadly.

'No… damn… well wish I was… though…' Crowley spat out. 'Can't… ever die from… arsenic…'

'Whyever not?' Aziraphale bundled up a blanket and placed it under the demon's head.

'Don't know. **[1]** Just… can't.'

The angel wrinkled his nose. 'To be honest, dear, I rather wish you could. Any human would have been dead by now.'

'Tough,' Crowley managed. 'Stuck with me.'

'Wonderful,' muttered the angel in a tone approaching sarcasm.

* * *

**[1] **At this point in time, the role of sulphur in reducing arsenic poisoning was unknown as chemistry hadn't become very advanced. But demons are practically made of the stuff. There's far too much to make arsenic poisoning a possibility, although the amount Crowley drank was enough to put them in serious pain.

* * *

**Information on arsenic: Wikipedia. Apparently some suphur-related chemical helped, and I thought, well, demons are very sulphuric, so they're probably safe. Although given that one of the effects of arsenic is extreme diarrhea, not exactly happy.**


	3. Engraving

**Ugh. I'm sorry this took so long. Exams. Ect.**

**Originally, the word for E was escapology. I couldn't get any ideas at all for it, though, and although I wrote a paragraph of something I now have _no idea at all_ where I was going with it, so I decided to just get another E word. This chapter was more or less influenced entirely by wikipedia'ing engravings. I was going to do something sensible, and then I saw the name _Israhel_ and just ran with it. I have therefore stolen the life of an innocent German artist for the sake of a story.**

**It's a pretty rubbish story, too. I hate this one because the characterisation is all over the place. Feel free to flame.**

* * *

**E****ngraving**

When you have lived 6000 years, sometimes you just get bored.

Crowley knew that very well indeed. Every thousand years or so, he'd just take a century off, or decide to switch continents on a whim, or begin to whip up the humans into thinking that the apocalypse was here. That was always fun, except when it was true.

He didn't think that the angel did, though. He wasn't sure that angels were _allowed_ to get bored. It wasn't as though they didn't have enough to do; a demon could take a century off secure in the knowledge that the humans would cause more than enough trouble on their own, but an angel couldn't possibly assume that the humans would spontaneously start being nice.

Never the less, all the evidence pointed to the angel taking a century or so off during the Middle Ages. In Germany, of all the places. _Germany_. In the _Middle Ages_. The country hadn't even _existed_, had it? Why not just hop off to the Caribbean for a decade?

Still, that shouldn't surprise him. Much. And he certainly wasn't surprised to find that he appeared to have taken a few years off to act as ghost-writer – ghost drawer? Ghost engraver? – to some German artist.

It was the manuscript that tipped him off. Crowley neither knew nor cared about bibliography but centuries of Aziraphale's acquaintance had taught him enough to know that this wasn't up to the angel's usual standards. It was battered, and knocked about, and consisted of nothing more than a few devotional tracts interspersed with woodcuts. Crowley could pick it up without wearing gloves, so clearly the devotional tracts weren't that devoted.

The angel snatched it out of his hands regardless and replaced it on the shelf, his cheeks pink. 'Leave it alone.'

'Why?' Crowley asked, curious. 'It's not like it's really valuable.'

'That's a first edition of a fifteenth century manuscript. It's very valuable.' The angel was a terrible liar, naturally, which Crowley had used to his advantage many times in the past.

'No it isn't. It's just some woodcuts,' Crowley said in a deliberately insulting tone.

'They're engravings. Actually.'

Crowley took a closer look at the spine of the book, which Aziraphale hurriedly retrieved and placed on a higher shelf.

'Israhel van Meckenem,' he read aloud, raising an eyebrow. '_Israhel_? That's not very Germanic.'

Aziraphale flushed. 'I might have influenced the parents a little.'

'Let me guess,' Crowley drawled. 'You _accidentally_ helped his father out with his engraving career, got the son named after you, and proceeded to do more of the same for the rest of his life too.'

'Something like that,' Aziraphale mumbled. 'I mean, he did some of it himself. He was an excellent goldsmith, you know.'

'I don't, and I don't care either,' Crowley replied. He looked at the cup of tea the angel offered him, frowned, and increased the alcohol content by about fifty percent. He ignored the disapproving look with practiced ease.

'You know, I have the only copy of the Groendaal Passion outside of the Metropolitan Museum in the world. Actually, it's the only copy in the world, since it was a one-off originally,' Aziraphale said conversationally. Crowley nodded and tuned him out. 'I managed to persuade him to print another one…'

The angel chattered on for some time, oblivious of the total lack of interest being shown by his companion.


End file.
